AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I know this because Willow loves deception and disguises and lies and costumes and because she’s been spending weeks putting up tacky Halloween decorations around our New York loft, and everything smells of pumpkin and cinnamon.
And because she told me.
“What’s all this shit?” I ask her, aghast, when I walk in to find the hallway strung with fake spiderwebs and shiny dangling bats.
Willow’s head pokes out from the doorway.
“Our Halloween decorations, obviously!”
She’s wearing red lipstick, almost clownishly red, and her long black hair is in pigtails. For a second, I’m distracted by the image of her pigtails in my hands and her red lipstick smeared around my cock. I brush the image away and stride down the hall into the open-plan living room. I freeze.
“What the fuck have you done to my dogs?”
“Ourdogs,” Willow pipes in.
Two of Cerberus lie by the lit fireplace, while the third sits at Willow’s heel as she strings up more fake cobwebs to replace the ones I threw away the day before. All three dogs are wearing black headbands with small pointy witch hats on them.
“Don’t they look great? The three witches, get it?” Willow raises her eyebrows at me. “FromMacbeth?”
I throw her a look. “I know where the three witches are from, Lynch.”
“Just checking. I know your books are mostly for show, so—”
“I might actually read my books if you didn’t steal them.”
“I stoleonebook,onetime, and technically speaking,Ibid for it.”
“Withmymoney.”
“With the portion ofyourmoney which you owedme.”
I resist the urge to tackle Willow off the chair she’s perched on and call, “Cerberus, heel!”
All three dogs look up. The two by the fireplace stand. The third hesitates, clever eyes shifting to Willow as if he’s waiting for her command.
“Don’t look at her,” I snap. “Look atme. Heel. Now.”
Willow hops down from the chair she’s perched on and pats Cerberus on the head. “Good boy, Cerby. Go on now.”
The third Cerberus springs up and finally obeys me, as if all he needed to do so was Willow’s blessing. I make a mental reminder to spend more time with the dogs and call my trainer for tipson avoiding having my dogs corrupted and bribed by mouthy interlopers.
Snatching all three headbands off my dogs’ heads, I stride into the kitchen and toss the lot in the bin. Willow follows me, incensed.
“You pathetic piece of shit killjoy! What’s your problem?”
“Take down the rest of this deplorable rubbish. This isn’t a refuge for children or asylum escapees.”
“It’sHalloween!”
“So what?”
Willow plants her hands on her hips. “So—it’s literally my favourite day of the year!”
It shouldn’t have been a surprise, really. Willow loves chaos and noise and sweets and costumes and being an evil little witch. I let it drop that night because I’m tired from work at my father’s New York offices, where I’m made to eat crow day in day out.
But the following day, I give strict orders for the cleaning staff to take down the decorations. That same evening, new decorations are back up, and when I storm into the kitchen to fight Willow—verbally and physically, I find her baking ghost-shaped shortbread biscuits.
She’s wearing a tiny black skirt and thigh-high stockings and a red heart-shaped apron, so instead of berating her, I end up pinning her over the soapstone countertop and licking her out in a cloud of icing sugar.
